Reality bites for 12 diggers who saved trapped workers

Celebrated as heroes, they hoped for better lives but instead have to return to daily grind

- Debarshi Dasgupta

NEW DELHI Just about a month ago, fame followed 12 manual excavators who dug through rubble to rescue 41 workers trapped for more than 16 days in a collapsed 4.5km tunnel in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.

The media - both domestic and international -celebrated them as heroes. Neighbours welcomed them with garlands and sweets.

Bands accompanied them triumphantly, as Indians sang paeans to their bravery on social media. Politicians congratulated them while onlookers cheered them on.

But now that the rescue effort is over, these manual diggers appear to be all but forgotten.

On Nov 12, a landslide caused a section of the tunnel - part of a high-profile $1.9 billion, 889kmlong all-weather road project connecting major Hindu pilgrimage sites in the state - to cave in. A 60m wall of debris separated the workers trapped within from freedom.

A powerful auger drilling machine armed with a screw blade that penetrates earth while rotating was deployed. But its progress was blocked at least twice by steel rubble, preventing its further use around 48m into the debris, through which an 800mm-diameter pipe was also being laid to evacuate the stranded workers.

For the final stretch, poor but highly skilled daily wage excavators who specialise in digging and laying underground water or sewer pipes for as little as 600 rupees (S$9.50) daily had to be summoned to do what complex and expensive machines could not.

They crawled into the pipe and cleared the remaining stretch of debris, using their hands, spades and gas cutters to inch ahead.